Site Mobile Navigation

E.P.A. Distorts Goals On Environment Audits

Re "Many States Give Polluting Firms New Protections" (front page, April 7): When I was in charge of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division in 1989, I urged states like Arizona and Colorado not to enact environmental audit privilege laws, saying they could impede enforcement against bad actors. I now regret a view that did not account for a sea-change in corporate environmental performance.

The Environmental Protection Agency perpetuates an anachronistic notion that willful violators proliferate in American industry, and it insists that it must have unrestricted discovery power for company records of internal compliance audits. Its position adversely affects continued improvement in industry environmental programs.

Until companies can have confidence that they won't be indicted based on their own audit documents of examining and rectifying oversights, mistakes or equipment problems, there will not be full incentive for further environmental progress. E.P.A.'s protest at the new state laws is overwrought, as they all have mechanisms for defeating claims in which a company's behavior is deemed blameworthy.